We are bringing this over from Mulch's forum (it's no longer supported), where it was known as Shaggy and Coco's Kitchen Olympics.

Shaggy and I take turns offering each other three recipes to choose from. (Or usually, just the main ingredients of each.) Once the choosing person has made his or her selection, we post the recipe. Then we each cook it and take pictures of it to post. We like an audience. That is, I do.

Anyone can join in by making the recipe and posting pictures of it, but only Shaggy and I choose the recipes and select from them. Cause, you know, it's our thing.

We've made some good new dishes this way, including a very interesting cauliflower something with a delicious chopped up cauliflower and something sauce; a wonderful cocoanut custard pie; a good French bread and a chicken Parmesan cutlets I made again the other night. And we've made some blah ones or ones we hated.

We do this every week or two, interspersed with long hiatuses for holidays or camping. This week Shaggy suggested sauces.

Combine all the ingredients except salt and pepper in a saucepan and whisk the mixture over medium heat until it expands in volume and begins to stiffen (the bottom of the saucepan will become visible while whisking).

Add salt and pepper and add more of the liquid or puree to create the desired consistency of the sauce.
---
1 cup mushroom puree:

10 oz of mushrooms
1/4 cup stock or water
juice of half a lemon

Rinse mushrooms and halve if they are especially large.

Put them int he saucepan with stock and lemon juice. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

I think she's exaggerating. We have a lot of fish, though. I took Trout Jr. On a charter trip this Summer and we limited on rockfish. We already had some in the freezer, so we have quit a bit. 35 pounds seems like it might be a bit more than we actually have, though.

I gave up. Not on the making the dish, but going to get ingedients for it.

So I'm getting ready to go to the store, and several little things go wrong. No big deal. Then I'm in the kitchen, getting my purse, and I knock over the diet coke to go I'd just fixed myself all over the table and floor. "It's obviously just not your day," I tell myself.

So I clean that up and get to the front door and can't get the key to work. (I have to go out the front door because he's sealed the deck and we can't go out the back door as usual.) I finally get the key to work, and by this time, the little voice in my head is saying, "God does not want you to go."

But I don't listen to that, because I've always refused to listen to that sort of thing; in fact, it generally makes me more determined to do whatever it was I wanted to do in the first place.

Not even when I slip and almost twist my ankle on the front steps I'm not used to is my determination shaken. I mean, where would we be if we listened to the "Someone's trying to tell you something" stuff? Which is why I never listen to it.

Then I get in the car and notice there's this huge-ass SPIDERWEB in between the seat and the gear-shift. Well, that's novel. Ok, no problem, some spider just got in there and I'll clean it off . . . when I notice the huge-ass SPIDER sitting in the web. Ok, that's it, I say. And I come back in the house to type this.

So there will be a slight delay before I make this dish.

3 users laughed. The question is: Are they laughing with you, or at you?:

I have made the sauce. If I'd realized it would make puke green sauce, I would have chosen one of the others.

I will never, as God is my witness, purée parsley again.

First off, hubby comes home from work just as I finished purreeing the mushrooms, and was forcing them through the sieve.

It looks exactly like very bad dog food.

"What's that," he says.

"Don't worry," I say, "this is for tomorrow night, for a sauce. It's just mushrooms. It will be all right."

Then I fed him tonight's dinner, which was chicken casserole and fresh spinach.

Then I go back to the sauce. One of the reasons I said I might alter it is I plan to put it over a chicken wrapped in philo dish (which I've also never made before), and it has it's own Sabayon sauce, so I thought I might combine parts of the two sauces.

In the end, though, I made the sauce above, with the exception that I made it over a double boiler, as opposed to over direct heat, as the recipe says. Me, I always think things of this type are better done in a double boiler.

It was fun separating the eggs, because it gave me the chance to use my Eggy Egg Separater, which I hadn't had the chance to yet:

So the funny thing is, the eggy separater worked great! I have always separated eggs by passing the yolk back and forth between the egg shell halves, but this was easier! And more fun. I love eggy stuff. I even made my Eggy Egg Whisk to sell on SL and posted it. Then this guy took a picture of his eggy egg whisk irl, in front of his monitor looking at MY SL egg whisk on the monitor. (Which my avatar was using obscenely. That was posted on the old SC, I believe; some of you might remember that!)

Anyway, back to the sauce.

Puke green, is what it is. As I'm stirring it, I consider the likelihood of hubby actually eating this. Bad enough he already saw the dog food part.

So I threw it out. Waste of two eggs. Made it again, with the mushrooms and the stock, and finished by adding some of the herbs from the other recipe. Put it in the refrigerator for tomorrow night. Froze the leftover mushroom puree; threw out the parsley.

I don't know how the sauce tastes yet, but it smells okay. I'll work with it more tomorrow night. I hope the new dish comes out okay, too. After that, I'll post pics as per usual.

So the funny thing is, the eggy separater worked great! I have always separated eggs by passing the yolk back and forth between the egg shell halves, but this was easier! And more fun. I love eggy stuff. I even made my Eggy Egg Whisk to sell on SL and posted it. Then this guy took a picture of his eggy egg whisk irl, in front of his monitor looking at MY SL egg whisk on the monitor. (Which my avatar was using obscenely. That was posted on the old SC, I believe; some of you might remember that!)

Anyway, back to the sauce.

Puke green, is what it is. As I'm stirring it, I consider the likelihood of hubby actually eating this. Bad enough he already saw the dog food part.

So I threw it out. Waste of two eggs. Made it again, with the mushrooms and the stock, and finished by adding some of the herbs from the other recipe. Put it in the refrigerator for tomorrow night. Froze the leftover mushroom puree; threw out the parsley.

I don't know how the sauce tastes yet, but it smells okay. I'll work with it more tomorrow night. I hope the new dish comes out okay, too. After that, I'll post pics as per usual.

Considering i make a lot of sauces with thai basil that involve processing and the colour isn't gorgeous I doubt that would turn me off.

This is really two new dishes I made, so first, I'll put the recipe for the chicken.

Phyllo-Wrapped Chicken with Sabayon Sauce

Tender chicken stuffed with prosciutto, wrapped in pastry and served with a silky sauce is enough to dazzle anyone. It's particularly pleasing for the cook, who can make it well before the guests arrive.

To change the number of servings, enter the number, then press "calculate". Serving Calculator or reset
Preparation

Cut chicken breasts in half horizontally almost but not all the way through; open like book. Brush with mustard; sprinkle with pepper and salt. Lay 1 prosciutto slice on each breast; fold breast over to enclose.

For each bundle, place 1 sheet of phyllo on work surface, keeping remainder covered with damp towel to prevent drying out. Brush with some of the butter; top with second sheet. Centre 1 breast on phyllo about 2 inches (5 cm) from 1 short edge; fold bottom then sides over chicken and roll up. Place, seam side down, on greased rimmed baking sheet; brush with some of the butter. (Make-ahead: Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 8 hours.)

Bake in 350°F (180°C) oven until golden and chicken is no longer pink inside, about 45 minutes.

Sabayon sauce:
In large heatproof bowl or top of double boiler, whisk egg yolks until pale; whisk in stock and vermouth. Place over simmering water; whisk until thickened and frothy, 8 minutes. Whisk in parsley, basil, oregano, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Serve with chicken bundles.

*You'll notice that sabayon sauce called for vermouth. Which I of course don't have. So I used the other recipe. Then did it again without the parsley, and added the herbs from this one.

*Also, I have not had prosciutto since I was young and in the Bahamas, when I ordered some and it came spoiled. I called and they said that was "the way it was supposed to be." So I never ate it since. I used black forest ham instead.

I considered this sauce to be a failure on my part. I didn't like the color or texture, or even the taste.

I had added extra stock as was suggested if desired, and actually used less of the pureed mushroom than called for (because, you recall, I had thrown out the first batch, which had the amount called for). Next time, I would use even more stock to improve the texture, if possible. (Course using broth instead of stock might be another problem.)

But there won't be a next time, because although I like mushrooms, this was entirely too mushroomy for me. Hubby liked it, though. I said, would you like me to make it again? No, he said, not if you don't like it. If I had liked it, he would have said sure.

I would also go buy some Kitchen Bouquet to add to it if I made it again to make it browner, as well as use much more liquid, so as to get a much saucier end product. It never got away from the dog food effect. It just became, more diluted dog food. Like I said, a failure.

As for the phyllo chicken, it was okay. Certainly something different, and easy enough to make, so I might make it again. But I would serve it with a gravy or sauce much more liquidy! Hubby pronounced the whole dish "fine."*

ETA: Or better yet, make the vermouth sabayon sauce to go with it.

*To understand hubby's scale: Being a man of few words, he has essentially four responses. Going from best to worst: (1) "It's good." (2) "It's fine." (3) "It's okay." (4) "Don't make it again, I don't care for it."

"Good" is actually quite a bit better than "fine." "Fine" is pretty good, but he's not going to write home about it. "Okay" is, as it says, okay, but probably not something he thinks I should go to too much trouble for again. The last is ... definitely not good, fine, or okay.

There is actually one higher praise point, but it doesn't happen much - the last time I remember was the coconut custard pie Shaggy and I made. That consisted of considerable sounds of pleasure and the suggestion that I should go into the pie-making business. Oh yeah, and the parmesan chicken.

I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum: I loved the sauce--even more so when it was first made. This sauce should not be reheated and used straight away, otherwise it will look like the sauce in my and Coco's photos.

I made some baked chicken breasts, fried rice, and some lemon zucchini to go with the dish. It was a successful dinner, but then I have always had a soft spot in my heart for mushrooms.

It's also interesting how similar our dishes look. You don't think we've become like an old married couple where we imitate one another....

In this book, a person's name is seldom bestowed on a recipe unless in good conscience it could not be otherwise. Even a mother's.

So it is for an elegant and delicious dinner roll made by my mother that this recipe is named. It is a lovely, light, golden roll that won for her several blue ribbons at the Indiana State Fair. She was an outstanding cook, but no matter what special dish she placed before her guests, it was her rolls that drew the most flattering remarks from the men - and requests for the recipe from the wives.

Lenora called them, simply, her "yeast rolls." Here is her recipe to be made into most of the dinner roll shapes - Parker House, bowknots, rosettes, butterhorns, crescents, cloverleafs, fan-tans, and pan rolls.
Ingredients

Baking sheet, muffin pans, and/or cake pan: Baking sheet or sheets for Parker House, bowknots, rosettes, butterhorns, and crescent rolls. Cloverleafs and fan-tans are placed in muffin tins, while pan rolls are set in 8" or 9" cake pans. Select the proper ones and grease.
By hand or Mixer, 15 min: In a large mixing or mixer bowl, blend the egg and sugar. Add the potato, milk, softened butter, and salt. Mix together either with a wooden spoon or mixer flat beater. Add 2 cups flour and the yeast. Beat 100 strokes, or for 1 minute in the mixer. Gradually add flour, 1/2 cup at a time, first with the wooden spoon and then by hand as the dough becomes firm. If using a mixer, attach the dough hook.

Work the flour into a moist ball until it cleans the sides of the bowl and has lost much of its stickiness. Under the dough hook, the dough will clean the sides of the bowl and form a ball about the revolving hook.

It is an easy dough to work with because of its high butterfat content.

Kneading, 8 minutes: If by hand, turn the soft dough onto a floured work surface and knead with a strong push-turn-fold motion until it becomes smooth and velvety under your hands. Or knead under the dough hook in the mixer. If the ball of dough sticks to the sides of the bowl during kneading, add sprinkles of flour. Knead for 8 minutes.

First Rising, 1-1/4 hours: Return the dough to the bowl, stretch a length of plastic wrap across the top, and leave at room temperature until the dough has risen to double in volume, 1-1/4 hours.

Shaping, 20 min: The dough (4 cups of which will weigh about 2 pounds) can be made into one shape of dinner roll or divided among the various shapes, as desired, in about 20 minutes.

Dust the work surface with flour. Divide the dough in half.

[I will put the instructions for the various shapes later, and just put for pan rolls here.]

Pan Rolls (24 pieces): With your hands roll each dough half into a 12" rope. Cut into 12 pieces. Shape each into a tight ball under a cupped palm. Arrange in the pan.

Second Rising, 30 mins: Brush the roll tops with melted butter, cover with wax paper, and leave at room temperature until the rolls have doubled in size, 30 minutes.

Pre-heat: Preheat the oven 400 degrees 20 minutes before baking.

Baking, 400 degrees, 12-15 minutes: Place the rolls in the oven and bake until a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. (If using a convection oven, reduce heat 40 degrees.)
Final step: Remove from oven and immediately brush with melted butter. Place on a metal rack to cool. Delicious served warm from the oven.

Parker House (28-32 pieces): Roll the first half into a circle, 3/8" thick. Cut with a 2-12" or 3" biscuit cutter. Place a light rolling pin in the center of the small rounds of dough. Carefully roll toward each end to create a valley through the center of the round. The center will be about 1/8" thick while the ends will be thicker. Or you may press the rounded handle of a knife into the dough to achieve the same results. Keep the rolling pin or knife handle dusted with flour as you work. Carefully brush each round to within 1/4" of the edges with the melted butter. This will allow the baked roll to open as a pocket.

Fold over the round of dough so the cut edges just meet. Pinch with the fingers to seal, and press the folded edge (the hinge) securely. Place each roll about 1/2" apart on a baking sheet as it's completed. Repeat with the remainder of the dough, as desired.

Bowknots and rosettes (24 pieces): With your palms, roll each dough half into a 12" rope. Divide the rope into 12 pieces. Roll each into a slender 8" rope. For a bowknot, tie each into a simple knot. For a rosette, tie a simple knot and bring one end up and through the center of the knot, bringing the other end over the side and under. Place on a baking sheet 1" apart; press the ends to the sheet to keep them from untying.

Butterhorns and Crescents (16 pieces): Roll each dough half into a 8" circle. Let the dough relax for 3 or 4 minutes before cutting into 8 wedges with a pastry wheel or knife. Roll up the wedge, toward the point, pulling and stretching the dough slightly as you roll. For butterhorns, place each on the baking sheet with the points under. For crescents, roll the wedge in the same manner but curve each into a crescent as it is placed on the baking sheet.

Cloverleaf (12 pieces): With your palms, roll each dough half into a 16" rope. If the rope draws back, allow it to relax for 3 or 4 minutes before proceeding. Cut each roope into 18 pieces. Shape each into a small ball; place 3, in triangle formation, in each muffin cup.
Fan-Tans (24 pieces): Roll each dough half into an 8" x 16" rectangle - twice as long as it is wide. If the dough pulls back, let it relax for a few minutes. Brush with melted butter. With a pastry wheel or knife, cut the dough across the narrow width into five 1-1/2" strips. Stack the 5 strips and cut the stack into 12 pieces. Place each into a 2-1/2" muffin cup with the cut side of the dough up.

Pan Rolls (24 pieces): With your hands roll each dough half into a 12" rope. Cut into 12 pieces. Shape each into a tight ball under a cupped palm. Arrange in the pan.

Bernard Clayton also gives food processor instructions for people who like to mix and knead bread in a food processor, which I don't. I find these instructions in the way, put in the middle of the instructions as he does (the hand vs mixer instructions are confusing enough), so I didn't copy them above.

However, here they are:

By Processor, 3 min.: Attach the steel blade. The sequence of adding ingredients varies from above.

Measure 1-1/2 cups flour into the work bowl and add the yeast, sugar, and salt. Pulse to blend. With the processor running, pour the milk through the feed tube, and add the egg, softened butter, and the potato.

Add flour, 1/4 cup at a time, either by taking off the cover or using the feed tube, until the batter becomes a rough mass of dough. If the ball of dough does not clean the sides of the bowl, add small portions of flour.

Kneading, 1 min.: When the dough has formed a ball, process for 1 minute to knead.

Stop the machine and test the dough with your fingers. If it is too dry, add water by the teaspoon with the machine running; if it is too wet, add flour by the tablespoon. The dough should be very elastic when stretched between the hands. If not, return to the work bowl and process for a few more seconds.

Here is my contribution for the recipe. I used the cloverleaf and paired the rolls with mashed potatoes, corn and lime salsa, fresh gravy, and Coco's swiss teak. The meal was a hit and the rolls were very fluffy.

The Kitchen Kook-Off is coming to a screeching halt, at least temporarily - say six months, mas o menos.

Hubby has been diagnosed with Type II diabetes, not an uncommon thing at our age. Fortunately, it's not too high, but it's definitely in there.

I have decided I can't even do these rolls, as he's not supposed to have them, and it would be entirely too cruel for both of us. This is unfortunate, as they were one of three recipes I picked out of the bread book which Shaggy and I both have for Shaggy to choose from. Maybe when we start back up, I'll make them with whole wheat flour or whatever.

Most of my joy in cooking comes from pleasing husband, so I would not get any joy out making him something he's not supposed to have. Nor would he out of eating it, no matter how delicious.

I am bummed about this whole thing, of course (for example, potatoes are my hands-down favorite food!), but I soon got over that, and decided to view this as a challenge. To learn to make him stuff he will love as much as he's always loved my cooking.

There are books and things for this. I intend to be the best diabetes cook out there, with still down-home cooking. I want him to continue enjoying his food. He'll be having a hard enough time going without his chips and snacks and other goodies. So this will be quite the study.

So that will take me quite a while, starting with the basics as I am. Eventually, I figure I'll get knowledgable enough so that Shaggy and I can still suggest recipes to each other without too much difficulty.

But I need time. Right now, I'm all aflummoxed just trying to figure out what food to take for camping this weekend.

Ultimately, miserable though this all is, it will be better for both of us. I, too, have flirted with pre-diabetes, though my numbers are good now, and take Metformin.

But I'll be damned if I can't get good enough with this that he'll think he's still getting a variety, and that it will still be delicious.

So as you can see, my hands are quite full food- and cooking-wise right now. Maybe six months or so, maybe sooner. I'll see how it goes. Hubby and I have quite a bit of learning and adjusting to do. I'm just glad we did the kitchen Olympics for a long time before this monkey wrench got thrown in. But we'll be back.